"the art of war" really does come in handy during important WoW message board beefs

so, maura linked to this lifehacker-commenter-voted list of 25 books that changed their lives. granted, she did specifically use the words "awful" and "geeks" in her post linking to it but i guess i just wasn't really properly prepared for what was going to be on the other side. because, wow. i am starting to wonder if i actually understand the meaning of something changing my life, because i'm not actually sure how the hobbit or dune could've possibly changed the way any person ever looked at the actual world they lived in. excerpts from list:

* ayn rand: i'm not going to even acknowledge this. you are all out of junior high, right? maybe?
* the stranger (though i'm guessing at least half of the voters called it l'etranger)/george orwell's "collected works" (which is exactly 2 things, to lifehacker's editors): you are a very unique holden caufield.
* the hobbit and it's related gaiety:
* dune: "after years of eating bland meat-and-potatoes white folks food, i now use spices more liberally!"
* harry potter: "after years of jerking off to adult actresses who are actually naked, i now jerk off to emma watson photoshops!"

my recommendation for a life-changing book, btw, is the complete adventures of curious george.

I SAID MAAAYYYBEEEE YOU'RE GONNA BE THE ONE THAT SAAAVES MEEEE

one time, i came out of life cafe (bushwick edition) and was sitting outside smoking with alex after brunch and a group of three teenage gangstas walked by loudly singing "wonderwall." like, every word of it. verses and all that! i don't even remember all that. apparently they were ahead of the curve!

what does geir hongro think?

(via fek.tumblr.com

real talk with ned raggett

how is babby formed?


should we get drugs? (it's pride week) (no homo)


can i get your sister jaime's e-mail?"


why does kevin shields say "we want hen fap" in "what you want"?

best restaurant trip ever

i just wanted to publicly thank alex blagg for being the first person to actually send drinks to our table across a restaurant. i thought that only happened in movies but hey! dreams do come true. making the poor, confused waitress tell us that the beers were from "a mr. keith gessen" was a priceless touch. a++++ would've sent a drink back from "ms. julia allison" but you were on your way out.

i know alex already thanked you but seriously that was the most awesome thing a person could've ever done. short of, like, helping us unpack when we move (hint hint everyone else).

an insomniac's missive to the writing community

there's very few things i regret in my life, despite having many, many regrettable occurrances. i have no idea how to spell occurrances -- some writer, huh? the main thing i regret is never taking advantage of the offers i received when i was very young. i could've cowritten an (admittedly destined to be terrible urban outfitters kind of thing) book. i could've worked for the voice. i could've written for many publications, actually -- i was being courted. and i never did it. why? self confidence. greed. you make more money being a desk jockey. i got a lot of attention being a desk jockey, back then (real estate firms only hire ladies that can attract clients), but it was attention in a way that had limited pressure. you know? a mistake, avoiding real pressure.

so i guess that is why people like julia allison (who cannot write) and emily gould (who is a gifted writer) annoy me. emily more so than julia, even though julia's insipid columns are in my magazine and my webpage every week. because emily is talented. she has a gift for painting a picture.

but here's the thing. remember the old writer's adage, write what you know? do you guys--the emilys, the julias, the jakobs, the keiths, the me, the everyone honestly--know what you do not know? yourselves.

you do not know yourself. you possibly can never know yourself. so write what you know. book reviews, movie reviews, thinly veiled fiction, funny stories of the subway life---but stop writing about yourself. you gotta be about 70 until you actually know yourself, for real, and even then, my handful of years working in a nursing home tells me you might not even know. write what you know. write what you know right NOW.

you have no reason to trust me. i'm an anonymous person, signing checks with names that are not mine. but seriously, i'm asking everyone to trust me. you know your city. you know your friends. you know fashion, maybe? you know other books. you know your parents. you know booze. write about what you know.

when you're 70, and you have actually learned how to know yourself, THEN write about you. at that point, you'll be old enough that certainly something interesting has happened. until then, please stop trying. it's actually not worth your time. even gifted writers will be torn apart -- and it is because you are ignoring the golden rule of writing what you know, what actually speaks to you.

and now i drain a kitty's infected ear again. glamorous.

the correct word is...NIGHTMARE

i just wanted to point out that "evil guide dog" is now hosted here.

the world's cutest robot is harrison ford anyway

why does slate have two separate references to r2d2 on its front page today? who is writing these headlines and blurbs? an 8-year-old boy?

i'm goin insane/startin the hurricane/releasin pain/lettin you know that you can't gain/i MAINTAIN

it's friday, so why not have a cute cat video?


Muhammad "The Cat" Ali - Watch more free videos

i want to take his face...OFF!

have i drank too many sodas today? the no-faced blogging cat has grown on me to the point that i now think it's cute. it's like, i felt so guilty over my initial repulsion over seeing a kitty with a skeletor face that my mind forced itself to go as far possible in the other direction as possible. now i want to hug it, and pet it. i mean, it seems like a very sweet little kitty; she and her owner do therapy work with disfigured humans which is a bonus nicety. it just is missing a very, very important part of a kitty: the face part.

honestly, i don't even understand what kind of accident could occur that would even do this. how did chase lose just her little face? i'm imagining a horrible run-in with john travolta, before he settled on taking nicolas cage's face instead.

(oh, and you can all thank me later for not actually posting her picture here. as much as i've decided she is fascinatingly cute, i'm pretty sure the rest of you would still be highly disgusted. here is a billy idol video, instead, courtesy of brian)

and if pens misspell words, what happens in soviet russia?

this guy is the bomb, straight up, and you know it.

help me understand: "elf"

i am so spending this evening's packing, as if we're even going to get around to it, referring to alex as an elf whenever i can remember to do so. i love it when other people provide me with spectacularly ridonkulous insults that i never would've even dreamed of saying to another person on my own.

update: WELL I'M DONE FOR THE DAY.

random thought

as shocking as the rolling stone piece about amy winehouse might be to some (who? people unfamiliar with amy winehouse? people who have never been addicts? i don't really know, but i'm certain someone will be shocked), it just seems like it would be easier to hammer home the condition of this poor girl by pointing out that this used to be amy winehouse. you don't need a lengthy article, really.

this is lake directory, calling party barge

meowrson welles says: the astute people at serious eats have put together a handy-dandy guide to figuring out all of the ways to utilize the free seafaring transportation to the new red hook ikea to not go to ikea, as the driver must expect the utilizers to be doing, but instead do other things, like procure delicious tacos! in light of this, i've decided to come out of retirement to design a day for you, the lovely reader.

1) your day will begin at zaitzeff on nassau street in the financial district. while i have not yet had the pleasure of eating a burger here, i have heard many tales of their deliciousness. after your decadently meaty lunch, you will roll your newly portly self down to the ferry terminal south of the wall street subway stop.
2) you will then board the ikea ferry. please be sure to make pirate sounds! long-time readers might recall how much i love ferries.
3) when you disembark, perhaps stop in the ikea. i hear it has a ball pit! perfect for burning off the remainder of that burger.
4) now that you're done being childish in the ikea, head east a few blocks to the red hook ball fields and re-energize with delicious tacos and pupusas! we have to get our reserves back up properly if we want to engage in our final step.
5) walk back west a few blocks to sunny's, the greatest bar on earth, and throw back a few cheap, cold beers on the waterfront while listening to ancient men play bluegrass. you've earned it, after all this activity!

today i didn't even have to use my AK, i got to say it was a good day

sammy, the stray i'm "fostering," had developed a strange lump on her head. it looked like a bug bite initially, but kept getting bigger and bigger, until it was golf ball sized the other night. in a surprising move on god's part, as soon as i said the words, "i will definitely take her to the vet, that isn't a bug bite or a knock on the head," the cat proceeded to scratch the thing open and leak a delightful mixture of pus and blood everywhere.

now, i've had a pile of cats and dogs throughout my life, and while this is a disgusting thing to have occur, it's actually an okay thing--once the wound is reopened, it can drain. the problem was, sammy, normally a very sweet little thing, was very bothered by anything we used to try to help clean the wound. she continued to make the injury worse, so after a bit over 24 hours of this, i took her to the vet.

the veterinary saga began on the j train on the way home. i probably should've taken this odd occurence as a sign of more ridiculousness to come (usually it piles on). a teenage girl wandered in, straight up wearing a prom dress. at 1 pm. she also had mussed up make-up and hair going on, and looked a bit sleep deprived. i texted some friends inquiring if this was the worst walk of shame they'd ever heard of; richard said no. using more delicate terms than he did, the prom dress as a modern day equivalent to bloody sheets hanging out the matrimonial window seemed an exciting prospect.

i put this out of my mind and go to collect the poor cat. the first driver (what, did you think i was going to haul a caged, injured cat all the way to williamsburg on the train? and then walk to grand from the j? in 85 degree heat?) refused to take me because of the cat, because he was afraid of cats. even, i guess, caged ones. the second driver was very helpful: he opened the door for me, chatted a bit, and really went out of his way to get to the animal hospital quickly. At which point, he leaned over and gave me his telephone number in case i wanted to "hang out." if i call and his wife answers, i'm to hang up the phone immediately.

inside the vet's office, there is a tiny black fluffy dog which is pooping styrofoam. i will say no more about this other than i saw it do it. "styrofoam" is not a metaphor here.

sammy is now at the vet's office overnight. apparently the bump on her head was a bite that didn't heal properly, from before we took her in last week, and got worse (possibly because we introduced the concept of cat litter into her life shortly after she received the bite). as it turns out, this bite was most likely given to her by her boyfriend (in the words of the strangely antonio banderasesque vet). while he was impregnanting sammy. did you know that kitties can get abortions? i didn't, but now i do! thankfully, the vet decided to not charge me for some services, and give me breaks for others. suave method of flirtation or genuine sympathy for the dumb blonde who couldn't even tell her stupid stray foster cat was pregnant? you be the judge.

leaving the cat there overnight allowed me another chance to ride on the subway. sitting across from me was a person who i initially thought was male, wearing a t-shirt that said "i hate crooked cops." this sentiment was illustrated with a picture of a smurf.

all of this before 4pm! excitement never ends. i'll let ice cube express my opinion of today; he does so more eloquently and succinctly than i (obviously) can.

an e-mailed hello from my mom to all of you

(i basically imagine this is tuomas?)

"Parmesan [...] might be just a hair too serious for the occasion."

in the interest of being a better, more helpful person, i'd like to translate the 12 steps to pasta salad in this 600ish-word slate article that i'm sure the author actually was paid to write, because i know many of my readers are not culinary masters and really could use the art of making pasta salad broken down into plain, working-man's english.

1. people who are making their own pasta from scratch are not reading this article. so just use regular noodles that you find wherever! don't cook them too much--if you are wandering off to do blow or smoke cigarettes you're just going to screw this up. why are you even trying to do this?
2. much like a regular salad, you want to put some oil in your dressing. for those of you who have failed common sense 101, butter gets harder when it's cold so don't melt that and put it in your pasta salad.
3. store-bought filled pasta is gross. don't buy it. i don't care how hungover you are.
4. the types of pasta you do want to use are noodles, pasta, noodles, pasta, and pasta. ha ha ha! let's be serious here. anything but a long noodle. unless you're making an asian pasta salad! oh god, just give up now. you have no idea what is going on, do you?
5. mayo is gross, you big fatty. don't glob it on top of a bunch of noodles. you might as well top it off with some frosted flakes and some weed if you're just going to do that! (note: all bets are off if you are adding lobster to your salad; lobster is very classy so it offsets how white trash and disgusting you are, lobbing mayo all over linguine like a common retard.)
6. when i said mayo was off-limits, you totally thought to put ranch dressing on instead, weren't you? plebeian. what kind of pasta salad are you even making?
7. please, please, stop trying to use vegetables to be "festive" without giving any thought to how you are using them. peppers are not confetti!
8. hey, you know what you should actually consider doing? seasoning your sauces. i mean, you don't have to. it's not like you'd even be able to tell the difference, you mayonnaise-guzzling freak.
9. this one's a little out there: have you considered...cheese?
10. here's another weird one: ever consider putting some kind of flavorful meat or assertive vegetable in your salad?
11. oh, hey, don't, like, let it just sit around. it might get weird, or bugs might sit on it. you should eat it at some point. except that you've probably made this complicated, sophisticated dish all wrong, so maybe you should just throw it out at this point.
12. profit!

boredom and television

i saw a commercial last night with a woman who had decorated her entire house in polka dots, only wore polka dots, had furniture that featured cut-out circles to mime polka dots, had a spotted dog, so on and so forth who then went completely insane ocd about a small spill in her oven, stating that she doesn't want spots everywhere.

so i got rid of them on my webpage, because i hated that woman very much.

YSI? the follow-up

thanks to ross, i can now share "hawaiian sophie" with you.



please just wait for it. you'll figure out why you are being made to watch this pretty quickly into the video.

welfare prices

i'm disappointed this does not include an area code. i am very interested in trying to contact this person. very interested.

YSI?

so i'm searching for the video to the song "hawaiian sophie" by a rapper named jaz. this came on vh1 soul earlier and i really, really need to show this to all of you. help? it's not on youtube.